Coupling - The Complete Fourth Season

Rating:
Summary: British people having sex???
Review: British people having sex?? Now that IS funny! However, that is the only funny thing about this inane series that tries too hard to be the "Friends" of Britain. Only PBS would air such pomposity. Sorry, but British humor just escapes me.

Rating:
Summary: No matter what they do or say... Jeff is missing!
Review: By the end of the third season of the series we could see that major changes were coming for the characters and I was eagerly awaiting for the upcoming fourth season to find out about Susan and Steve's baby, Sally and Patrick's relationship and the suggested idea of Jane and Jeff being together. Well, you'll see most of it here but definitely not Jeff.

The reason why Richard Coyle is no longer in the show is unknown to me, and never mentioned in the bonus materials (which by the way include a complete interview with the new guy, Richard Mylan), but the writers obviously tried to justify his absence not succeeding at all. I will be honest and say that Jeff Murdoch was definitely my favorite character of them all, and I don't have anything against the new Oliver character, but listen to his dialogues and you'll see that the writers tried to fit already made Jeff dialogues into his persona, which doesn't help the new character at all.

But regardless of the new Oliver character, this season comes as witty and intelligent as it has always been. The first episode for instance shows you the same timeframe (9 1/2 minutes) from three different points of view that fit together in the end, total genius!

`Nightlines' and the never ending phone call will give you a good laugh, the game of coupling in the third episode is just amazing and the highlight is definitely episode 6 (9 ½ months) with a retuned Jeff that totally lets you down, put aside that and the rest of the episode will make you cry (Steve definitely draws all attention here)

I usually give 5 stars to the show but being the current Oliver-Jeff situation this won't be the time. I think this problem could be fixed if the writers could give Oliver a personality of his own instead of trying to adapt him with Jeff's.


Rating:
Summary: not as good as past seasons.
Review: I am a big fan of this series and have watched all episodes. It is a funny, clever show and the entire cast has been interesting. However, this season the writing was definitely not as good as before. The laughs were few and far between and the actors seemed stiff and the entire show felt forced and awkward.

A new character named Oliver is introduced to replace Jeff. He is obviously meant to be an identical replacement, but he doesn't work. He is mostly annoying, not funny, and his physical gags are not amusing. I think the show would have been better served by picking a replacement that was very different from Jeff.

Finally, although this season is disappointing, it would have been nice to have more than 6 episodes. BBC production continues to baffle me as this show's output has varied radically from year-to-year. The show continues to have potentially interesting storylines, so I am hoping for better writing and execution next year.


Rating:
Summary: Still a great show, but...
Review: I have been a big fan of this show from the very first season. It is funny, a little edgy (at least in comparison to American shows) and very entertaining. So of course I was anxiously awaiting the start of the fourth season. Even thought fourth season remained funny, I could not believe that my favorite character - Jeff was no longer part of it. I was and still am puzzled by it, how do you replace the funniest character on the show?

Instead we get a less sympathetic and not as funny knockoff called Oliver. And even though Moffat tried to put Oliver in Jeff-like situations with same type of dialog, it's just not the same. I wont Jeff back. In addition to Jeff's departure, it seems like the whole show got toned down a notch. I guess I got used to this show to be unbelievably funny and changes made to it do not seem to make it better. However, like I said before it is still very funny and I will be watching it many times till the next season comes out.

Rating:
Summary: " Free Another Crappy Night Offer Expires Today!"
Review: i searched for bs and got this show, i didn't want to give it a bad rating so i gave it this.

Rating:
Summary: Oliver cannot replace Jeff - and ruins everything, trying to
Review: I was dismayed to discover early in the first episode of Season 4 that Jeff was aparently already en route to Lesbos (!) and wouldn't be seen for the remainder of the Series!
Instead we get this inserted look & sound-alike, called Oliver, who Moffatt gives all the Jeff-like lines & situations to, but the poor Newbie just can't handle them, and anyone who has got as far as Season 4 with the wonderful (so-far) 'Coupling' will be just left cringing and WISHING Jeff could be there delivering the lines in HIS inimitable and wonderfully zany and accomplished way!
The rest of the cast are Wonderful, as we have come to expect & love, but each time the Oliver character appears, one is left feeling like fingernails have been dragged down a blackboard, and the whole scene is ruined by it.
Stick with Seasons 1 - 3 !

Rating:
Summary: What? Jeff is gone and we only get six episodes? Oh oh...
Review: If you were disappointed when you learned there were only two discs for Series Four of "Coupling," then the news that there are only episodes on the first of those two discs is going to be downright depressing. Given the results I have seen to date I appreciate the British idea of avoiding having a set number of episodes in any given series (read "season" on this side of the Pond) because that increases the quality of what we see a lot more than the American model, which is driven towards the goal of having one hundred episodes that usually translate into profitable syndication. But only six episodes to get us through Steve trying to deal with Susan's pregnancy, Sally and Patrick's serious relationship, and Jane's close encounters with Oliver, the new guy, fans have to feel Series 4 comes up short (and that is before we ever come to terms with that new guy replacing Jeff).

This series takes us from "Nine and a Half Minutes" to "Nine and a Half Months," and since the previous series ended with Susan (Sarah Alexander) announcing she is pregnant is not surprising that this one ends with the birth of the baby. We have seen writer Steven Moffat play with time and space before (e.g., "The Girl With Two Breasts" from Series 1 and "Split" from the start of Series 2), and he continues along those lines in these two episodes. "Nine and a Half Minutes" gives us the same time frame from the perspective of each couple, while "Nine and a Half Months" finds Steve (Jack Davenport) unstuck in time (and having his weirdest dreams ever) as Susan goes into labor.

With Susan being pregnant her relationship with Steve is pretty much reduced to his complete and total fear over the miracle of birth. Dragging him to antenatal classes ("Circus of the Epidurals") is the disaster you would imagine. But overall the best moments for Series 4 come from watching Sally (Kate Isitt) and Patrick (Ben Miles) become closer. The sticking point becomes whether or not Patrick has slept with Jane (Gina Bellman), an issue raised by a late night phone call that does not end until all six characters are on the line ("Night Lines") and not resolved until the final episode, when Sally actually gets into the infamous cupboard of Patrick's love and finds a box she should not open. In between we get the creative allegory of a knight playing a game of chess with a princess in "Bed Time."

I agree that the attempt to work Oliver (Richard Mylan) into the mix is problematic. Part of the trouble is how Oliver comes across too much like a poorer version of Jeff (Richard Coyle), who is present in spirit and a bit more (Samantha Spiro) for a couple of episodes. Granted, changing the peculiar mix of characters in this sextet is risky, but they should have come up with more when they came up with Oliver. The other factor here is pairing up Oliver with Jane, which works a bit better because it finally allows her to be the confident one in the relationship, as amply seen in "The Naked Living Room." This certainly suggests some ways of rethinking the Oliver character, but it is obviously a bit too late for that. Like everything else on "Coupling," the story of Oliver and Jane is to be continued.

However, I have to think we are getting close to the end of the road for "Coupling." This is not because baby Joshua has arrived, but rather because everybody is now paired up on the show ("Friends" stopped before things got that far). No wonder there were only six episodes in Series 4: once Jane and Oliver hook up nobody is out looking for sex any more. In fact, there is every possibility that "Coupling" will no longer be about sex but will actually be spending more time on the subject of love, at which point we should probably turn out the lights because the party will be over.

Rating:
Summary: Tremendously disappointing
Review: It was bad enough that Jeff wasn't present but trying to fit the character Oliver into the picture made things even worse. All of the chemistry between the characters seemed to have vanished and the show just kind of limped along.

Rating:
Summary: No Jeff = No Funny
Review: Sorry, without Mr. Murdoch this show has just lost it's spark. The first three seasons had me laughing out loud. This has it's funny bits, but it's just not the same.

Rating:
Summary: outstandingly average
Review: There is no way that this fourth season will capture the enthusiastic responses from fans of the previous seasons. Although some shows can survive the departure of a lead character, it seems unlikely here. Fans of the previous seasons will both enjoy and loath this new season, and new fans will not be attracted. Watching these episodes one cannot but realize how integral Jeff was to the show's success and how much everyone else functioned mainly in supporting roles. Think of those "Jeff-ism" episodes that you have forced visitors in your house to sit down and watch ("I've got too many legs" "Oh, Jeffrey" etc.) and then bemoan the absence of anything in this series that comes remotely close to matching those. It is somewhat sad that one of funnier scenes in the entire series involves a dream sequence in which Jeff "returns."The Oliver character struggles through some horribly written lines with abysmally-timed comedic acting but does become believable, if not likeable, by the end. And yes the other characters do mature, Sally, Jane and Patrick becoming less neurotic, less crazy, and less dumb along the way...but it must be said, also perhaps less funny too. Gone as well are the clever storylines: nothing rivals the innovation of the temporaly displaced Hebrew-English translation, nor the time-shifted split screen episodes for example. Instead we have a collection of fantasy bits that while funnier than Allie McBeal are often less so than Scrubs for instance.

Bottom line is that there is nothing here that one will watch and enjoy in two decades time as one can (and indeed does) with the entire Faulty Towers series or with selected gems from the Doctor in the House series, and I expect one will with a handful of selected episodes from the first three seaons of Coupling.

So should you buy it or wait until it is shown (again for some) on American television? If you are a big fan you have probably bought it already. If, however, you thought the first 3 seasons were hit and miss, you should do the latter here. It must be admitted though that even after all the criticism, even an average episode (and you have 6 of them here) is still better than 4/5ths of large network sitcoms from this side of the Atlantic.